541. Meat Without Mirth
Eaten I have; and though I had good cheer,I did not sup, because no friends were there.Where mirth and friends are absent when we dineOr sup, there wants the incense and the wine.
Words in this poem
- dine v. i.
- To eat the principal regular meal of the day; to take dinner. [F. dîner, OF. disner, LL. disnare, contr. fr. an assumed disjunare; dis- + an assumed junare (OF. juner) to fast, for L. jejunare, fr. jejunus fasting. See Jeju]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
541. Meat Without Mirth is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #22421; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Herrick, 541. Meat Without Mirth, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/541-meat-without-mirth.html, id L05513.
Form and metre
541. Meat Without Mirth is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABB cheerA · thereA · dineB · wineB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Eaten I have; and though I had good cheer, | 10 | /˘········ |
| I did not sup, because no friends were there. | 10 | ·········· |
| Where mirth and friends are absent when we dine | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Or sup, there wants the incense and the wine. | 10 | ·····˘/··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.